Everything you Need to Know about Intrusion Detection System (IDS)

Cyberattacks have become prevalent these days and there are a variety of tools that can be found for detecting exploits and attacks. Amongst the numerous security tools that are available, one is referred to as an Intrusion Detection System (IDS). This system is designed to monitor network traffic for any suspicious activity and alerts are issued upon detection. This software application is designed for scanning a system or network for policy breaching or any harmful activity. Any malicious violation or venture is normally reported to an administrator or a security information and event management (SIEM) system is used for collecting them.

While intrusion detection systems are designed for monitoring networks for any potential malicious activity, they may also experience some false alarms. Therefore, it is best for businesses to fine-tune their IDS products when they are installing them for the first time. This means intrusion detection systems have to be set up properly for recognizing what normal traffic on the network is like as opposed to malicious activity. In order to do this properly, you can choose a professional provider, such as https://www.digitalhands.com/ and set up your system in the right way.

Types of Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)

There are two types of intrusion detection systems (IDS) that can be found, which are outlined below:

Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS)

These systems are setup at a specific point within the network for examining traffic from different devices on the network. This system observes all passing traffic on the whole subnet and matches it to the collection of known cyber-security attacks. If any abnormal behavior is observed or an attack is discovered, the administrator can be immediately alerted.

Host Intrusion Detection System (HIDS)

This type of intrusion detection system has been designed to run on independent devices or hosts on the network. This system monitors the incoming and outgoing packets only from the device and the administrator will be alerted if malicious or suspicious activity is detected. A HIDS system takes a snapshot of all existing system files and compares it with an older one. If any analytical system files were deleted or edited, the administrator is alerted.

Detection Method of IDS

Signature-based Method

This system detects any cyberattack on the basis of specific patterns like number of 0’s, number of 1’s or number of bytes in the network traffic. The patterns detected in the IDS are known as signatures. Attacks whose pattern already exist in the system can be detected easily, but detecting new attacks whose signature is not known can be difficult as new malware pops up regularly.

Anomaly-based Method

This system was introduced for detecting any unknown malware attacks as new ones are developed rapidly. Machine learning has to be used for creating a reliable activity model and anything incoming is compared to that model and is considered suspicious if it is not found in it. Since these systems can be trained according to hardware configurations and applications, they can do a better job than Signature-based Method.